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Gas Blasts Spur Questions on Oversight

At a Christmas Eve gathering in 2008, a natural gas explosion in a suburban Sacramento neighborhood killed a 72-year-old man and injured his daughter and granddaughter. Investigators determined that Pacific Gas and Electric was to blame for a leak, but federal and state regulators never cited the utility for safety violations.

It was one example of what many experts and studies say is weak oversight of gas pipelines in the United States, a problem that has contributed to hundreds of pipeline episodes that have killed 60 people and injured 230 others in the last five years. Those figures do not include the final toll of the explosion of another Pacific Gas and Electric pipeline this month in San Bruno, Calif., that left seven people dead and more than 50 injured.

Though the cause of that explosion was still under investigation, it was the latest event to raise concerns among safety experts. Several independent government reviews, going back several years, have found systemic problems with the way the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the federal agency in charge of pipeline oversight, enforces safety rules.

In 2004, for example, the General Accounting Office documented how pipeline safety enforcement “needs further strengthening.” It noted that average fines of less than $30,000 offered little deterrence and that the agency had trouble collecting the fines.

“I believe there is a lack of a strong safety culture in the natural gas industry,” said Jim Hall, the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board from 1994 to 2001 and an experienced pipeline investigator. “When you have a lack of enforcement activity, you end up with a tragedy.”

An examination of the pipeline agency’s safety record points to many shortcomings, as well. For example, a review by The New York Times of all enforcement cases initiated during the past eight years shows that a third of them are unresolved.

While the average fine has gone up, the amount is unclear, based on federal records, and the number of fines issued by the pipeline agency fell 40 percent last year compared with 2004, when the G.A.O. issued its critical report.

Several cases from the early 1990s remained open until last year. Some cases involving unsafe pipelines and dating back more than eight years were still being investigated.

The pipeline agency has acknowledged that it lost track of some enforcement actions, not knowing whether cases had been resolved or fines had been paid. The agency said it solved that problem last year with a new database to track cases.

It defended its enforcement work, saying that it has made improvements, particularly in the last two years, to resolve lingering cases. And it is seeking legislative approval to increase its oversight. “This administration has significantly stepped up enforcement of P.H.M.S.A. pipeline safety regulations,” said Cynthia L. Quarterman, the agency’s administrator.

Industry trade groups say that despite the accidents, pipelines are among the nation’s safest way to deliver fuel to homes and businesses. And not every case is the fault of pipeline operators.

Utilities reported to federal regulators that roughly half of significant “incidents,” as they are known in the industry, are the fault of others, including cases in which builders, cable companies and utilities excavate and unwittingly dig into underground gas pipes.

Photo

SAN BRUNO, CALIF., SEPT. 9, 2010 Fire investigators searched houses in the Crestmont neighborhood after a high-pressure natural gas line exploded, killing seven people and injuring more than 50. Investigators have not determined the cause.Credit
Jim Wilson/The New York Times

But federal records show that many serious episodes are caused by factors for which utilities are responsible, including pipeline corrosion, operator errors and malfunctioning equipment.

They include at least two dozen excavations where pipeline operators themselves dug into their own lines, something that Pacific Gas reported doing at least twice in recent years. Texas regulators recently determined that a June explosion of a large gas transmission line from excavation was the fault of an operator that failed to mark the pipeline properly.

The pipeline agency directly oversees huge transmission lines that cross state borders. But for most pipelines it relies on state agencies. It certifies the agencies to ensure that they enforce rules based on national standards. It helps finance them, provides training, and relies on them to conduct inspections.

But the level of oversight varies widely from state to state. For example, the California Public Utilities Commission, which oversees most of the state’s gas pipelines, told federal regulators several years ago, in documents, that it “rarely” fines any gas pipeline operation for violations.

The situation has not changed. Statistics show that in the past decade, the commission has issued 29 fines — less than 1 percent of all compliance actions, most of them more than six years ago. The amounts were small, and only half of the $29,200 total for those 29 fines has been paid.

“I don’t think there is any utility in the state of California who doesn’t take seriously the enforcement of the Public Utilities Commission,” said Richard W. Clark, the commission’s director for consumer protection and safety.

He said that the commission, after almost two years, had reassigned the 2008 suburban Sacramento explosion to a different lawyer and may consider further enforcement action in the coming weeks. “We’re not afraid to take an enforcement action when we feel it’s warranted,” Mr. Clark said.

The pattern in California has been repeated in states around the nation.

Records show that Michigan, Illinois, Arizona, Colorado, New Jersey and Missouri rarely issue fines. And even when other states issue fines, collections are uneven. In places like Ohio, Georgia and Kentucky, records show, half or less of all fines are paid by gas utilities. There are a few states, like Virginia and Washington, that observers rank as doing a far better job.

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The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, a trade association representing many of the nation’s operators of large pipelines used to carry gas over long distances, characterized the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration’s enforcement practices as rigorous.

“If you look at the corrective action orders — Did they do this or did they do that? — you can see they are accomplishing what they set out to do,” said Terry Boss, the association’s safety director. But he said the results were different when it comes to state enforcement programs. “These programs are not as effective as they should be,” he said.

The federal pipeline agency, which trains state officials on overseeing pipeline safety, finances state programs and is in charge of certifying that states meet federal standards, defended the way states handle enforcement, saying it was “satisfied” with how states carry out their duties.

The agency also issues special waivers that often allow pipeline operators to bend safety rules as to meet growing demand. The companies include 10 that have faced at least a dozen enforcement actions during the past eight years, including not meeting safety standards, according to a New York Times review of nearly 100 waiver applications considered by the agency.

“That is one of the areas where we have a lot of concern, especially the drain on the agency with the volume of requests for exemptions,” said Carl Weimer, head of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a federally financed nonprofit watchdog group set up after a fatal 1999 pipeline explosion in Bellingham, Wash.

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ABILENE, TEX., SEPT. 7, 2000 Firefighters soaked the ground at the site of a pipeline explosion in an effort to keep the flames from spreading to the tinder-dry countryside. An off-duty police officer was killed and two people were injured.Credit
Ronald W. Erdrich/Abilene Reporter-News, via Associated Press

Mr. Weimer said companies seeking exemptions from safety rules should pay fees that would cover the time regulators need to devote to handling their requests. The gas association said that safety has not been compromised, and that waivers encourage operators to experiment with alternative technologies.

The pipeline agency said it is in the process of altering its system for granting special waivers. In the past year, it has begun considering a company’s enforcement history when deciding whether to issue a special waiver.

It has also begun reviewing all waivers issued in the past, with an eye toward toughening them. For the first time, it said, it will regularly limit their duration to five years, rather than keeping them in place as long as a pipeline company wishes.

Critics of the pipeline agency acknowledge that it has made some improvements. They say that it has adopted many key N.T.S.B. safety and security recommendations — including seven this year alone — though several of them had been awaiting action for years.

The N.T.S.B., which is in charge of the investigation into the San Bruno explosion, said it does not yet know what caused the blast and plans to issue an initial report within the next two weeks. It may then hold public hearings, and the full investigation could last a year.

For its part, the pipeline agency is concentrating on an inspection program in which operators are focusing on large gas lines that course through densely populated areas of the nation, like San Bruno.

The goal is to examine about 20,000 miles of transmission pipelines, out of the roughly 2.7 million miles of all types of gas lines. Half of those larger pipes were due to be inspected by the end of 2007.

The San Bruno pipeline was among those inspected, though its design prevented Pacific Gas and Electric from using state of the art “smart pigs,” robotic devices that tunnel through pipeline looking for corrosion and cracks.

Yet one unanswered question about this program, much touted by the pipeline agency, is whether it met its 2007 deadline. Operators were supposed to tell the agency how much pipeline had been inspected, but records show that at least a dozen companies claimed to have inspected hundreds more miles of key transmission lines than they actually own.

Agency officials have also been changing reporting requirements and meeting with utilities over the issue of reporting which pipe has actually been checked.

While the agency said it could not guarantee that the 2007 deadline was met, it said was confident it would meet a December 2012 deadline, when all 20,000 miles of pipeline are supposed to have been inspected.

However, said Mr. Hall, the former N.T.S.B. chairman, that effort is drawing attention away from the overwhelming majority of pipelines, which he believes should be subject to more stringent inspections, particularly older pipelines. The vast majority of accidents involving deaths and injuries occur along the smaller distribution lines that go to homes and businesses, also large transmission lines in rural areas.

He cited disasters he investigated while at the safety board, like one a decade ago in Carlsbad, N.M., that killed a dozen people. They are reminders of the dangers of unsafe gas lines, Mr. Hall said.

“The explosive nature of a pipeline,” he said, “is not far away from the force of a military explosion.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 25, 2010, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Millions of Miles of Pipe, and Years of Questions. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe